


Only a Bad Turian

by YamiTami



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-13
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 08:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8837392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiTami/pseuds/YamiTami
Summary: Only a turian would be stupid enough to try to fix Omega, but only a bad turian would be smart enough to succeed.Inspired by zaeedsmassani's tumblr post.





	

Only a turian could ever look at the lawless chaos of Omega and think there was any way to impose order. Even the iron fist of its Queen only did so much, and Aria had no desire to protect those who could not protect themselves. So long as the merc gangs remembered the one rule of Omega she let them do whatever they wanted.

The thing is that a turian knows order in a system of order. Like trying to do base ten math in base six or trying to cook a levo meal with dextro ingredients, any plans they might make would fall to failure. And on Omega, the kindest reward for failure is a quick death. There are so many fates far worse and Omega excels in every one of them, particularly for those who seek to upset the balance of mercs and gangs and drugs and oppression and pain. And while her reach is not as absolute as it seems, Aria is still undeniably the Queen. She _is_ Omega, and any good and proper turian trying to solve this mess would aim for the head. And then Aria would have theirs. Her reach does not extend into all the dark corners of the station, but inside the bounds of her influence she is nigh untouchable.

Only a turian would be stupid enough to try to fix Omega, but only a _bad_ turian would be smart enough to succeed. Only a bad turian would ignore Aria and focus on the merc bands. Only a bad turian would resort to the decidedly un-turian methods needed to get the job done. And only a bad turian, an outcast in a society with a strictly defined place for everyone, would have the anger needed to carry them through.

Garrus Vakarian had never been a very good turian.

Any turian, good or bad, knows that death is a fact of life, knows to mourn and clean the wound and let it heal. And Garrus tried, he truly did, to stitch up the jagged, gaping wound left by Shepard’s death. If their fate were only death, even one so cruel as the great soldier gasping for breath among cold stars, then maybe Garrus would have healed. But just as the grief started to fade to a dull ache the wound was ripped open again. No body recovered from the uncaring void but that didn’t stop the Alliance and the Council from stabbing their hero Specter in the back. Questions of mental instability raised, every call they ever made questioned, all so those at the top didn’t have to acknowledge the threat that would come whether they were ready or not. The betrayal an infection, the boiling rage the resulting fever, the disillusioned C-Sec cop ran away from home. Omega is a place of open wounds and Garrus Vakarian came to the wretched place to let his fester.

Garrus started with a slum where the mercs had a weak hold. A good turian aims for the head, goes for the clean kill, but a bad turian knows that blowing off a foot will slow a target down. As it happened most of the residents were humans, and so when rumors turned to folklore they delved into their own mythologies. There were a few possibilities making the rounds--a hero who defeated a many headed snake of some kind, something about the only man to enter a government building with honest intentions--but Archangel is what they settled on. Garrus looked up what it meant. It was a little awkward, being named a divine instrument from a religion he didn’t follow, but he reasoned that the name was more for the people than for him. Let them call him what they want. It didn’t matter what his name is. _He_ didn’t matter beyond his ability to get the next mission done.

If he felt a little less numb he might’ve chuckled at the image he pulled off the extranet. So far no one knew that the mysterious vigilante was in fact a turian and yet the people of the slums still managed to pick a bird. As it was Garrus stared at the image of white robes and feathery wings and wondered if Shepard believed in those things. He found himself wondering if one came to Shepard in the end, if maybe, maybe, they weren’t so utterly alone when they died. Then he threw his omni-tool across the room and stood alone with nothing but his own shaking breaths.

Garrus never planned it out, never acknowledged his reckless behavior for what it was, but he came to Omega to die. To throw himself against the rocks of cruelty and greed until enough pierced plate and hide to bring him down fighting. The death denied to Shepard. A bad turian and a good man and a lost soul, Garrus threw everything he had into his solitary mission to make the mercs bleed. The future didn’t extend beyond a day, occasionally a week, only as far as he had to look for the next mission. Nothing existed besides him and the target in his scope. Everything at a distance, everything as cold as Shepard’s death.

Then he saved a turian being beaten by the Blood Pack. A fellow expatriate, another bad turian, Lantar Sidonis knew what kind of road would lead a turian to Omega. He could understand why this crazy vigilante was doing what he was doing. Sidonis wanted to help. Good turians don’t work well alone, and neither do bad turians, and maybe Archangel saw a different meeting in his head. _Commander Shepard? Garrus Vakarian. I was the officer in charge of the C-Sec investigation into Saren. Archangel? Lantar Sidonis. I work at Harrot’s in the back._ Standard turian greeting, no reason to think anything of it, but maybe Garrus wasn’t so ready to work alone as he thought.

Archangel was a stranger to the station, but all the other members of his team lived there. Many grew up there. It’s amazing what you can get used to, what a person can normalize, until some idiot comes along and shakes the system. While he channeled it into helping others ultimately Garrus was there for selfish reasons, to forget, to remember, to rub salt in an infected wound, but these men were there for their friends, their families, for children not yet born. They gathered around Archangel because he got things done, because he gave them the opening to help make their home a better one. Garrus had allies again. He had friends. He had a cause and a reason to live. The future stretched from a week, to months and years. The wound finally, finally started to heal.

Then betrayal ripped it open all over again.

Even if the bad turian held off the never-ending assault of mercs and dumb kids, even if the good man survived long enough to see Shepard’s ghost in his sights, even if the lost soul had enough left in him to survive half his face being turned into ground meat, even if Garrus Vakarian made it out alive Archangel still died at the end of that long bridge, the symbol laid to rest at the end of that long line of body bags.

And if Garrus Vakarian outlived his symbol then he would in time come to see how pointless it was, for him and for all the good men he led to their deaths. Between Archangel’s attacks, the losses the mercs suffered on the final push, and Aria’s retribution when a certain datapad found its way into her hands, it’s true that the corrupt gangs were severely weakened. But they weren’t gone, and a tumor only half removed will grow back. New mercs, new leaders would rise, and in the end nothing will have changed, or so he told himself over and over as he scratched the betrayer’s name from his visor. All that work, useless. His time on Omega, worthless.

Except sometimes it’s not what you do, but what you inspire and enable others to do. Symbols are funny things. Even if the strongest ones fail they fail as martyrs, and even though Archangel never made it back across that long bridge the damage, the good, it was already done. Mercs and gangs decimated, the people stirred up with a hope they’d not felt in years. The old establishments still held the station but with a grip far more tenuous than before. And nothing will unite disparate groups like a Reaper invasion or Cerberus takeover. When the Queen made a deal with the devil and found herself dethroned it was the perfect time to continue what Archangel started.

Garrus Vakarian was a bad turian. Nyreen Kandros was a good one. She wanted nothing more than to serve her people, to make her parents proud, to live up to the expectations that came with her family’s strong history of military service. Nyreen was a _good_ turian. She trusted that her superiors would make the right judgement calls and followed orders without question. She put her head down and worked hard, oh yes, she started with the benefit of her family’s name and natural talent but it was her dedication that truly set her apart. Had Archangel’s father known the young woman he might have used her as an example of what his son should aspire to be. Smart, loyal, a follower and a leader all in one package, Nyreen wasn’t just a good turian, she was the model turian.

Garrus rejected the Hierarchy’s rules. Nyreen followed them to the letter and then the Hierarchy rejected her for something she had absolutely no control over. Her skills and service record meant nothing when her biotic abilities surfaced. Everyone pretended it was an opportunity, on the surface it was nothing more than a transfer to a unit where her skills would serve the Hierarchy best. But just below the polite veneer, barely hidden in the subvocals, in the twitches of mandible and brow plates, there lurked the dark truth. The cultural heritage of a turian biotic, to be viewed with suspicion, to never be truly trusted, Nyreen felt it pressing in all around her. But still she followed orders without question, even if the look in their eyes made her plates itch. Still Nyreen did as she was told, still she accepted the wisdom of those who ranked her. Though they didn’t trust her she trusted them.

Even as her house burned down around her, she turned a blind eye to the destruction and trusted her superiors when they told her there was no fire.

Nyreen Kandros was a _very_ good turian.

Her new commanding officer took one look at her textbook salute and shook his head, one part amused and one part pitying. It would be years before Nyreen understood why. She came to her powers too late, already one with the rank and file that taught her to hate biotics, to hate herself. She already had a life and a career outside the Cabals and no amount of time would fully take that resentment away. And the Cabals were just too different for someone who served elsewhere first instead of being shuffled in right after boot camp. Nyreen’s CO shook his head at her because he knew a good turian when he saw one. And he knew what happened to good turians who ended up in the Cabals.

Some said their behavior was closer to what barely passed for command structure in the quarian Flotilla versus the proper turian Fleet. Those who said it meant it as an insult, but the turian biotics who truly belonged in the Cabals twisted it to a compliment. The quarians on a given ship were not a crew so much as a family. They had to be, to survive in a galaxy that hated them, the Flotilla an island in a sea of spite. And in a sea of suspicion the Cabals were the only safe harbor for turian biotics. They were still part of the Hierarchy, still loyal members of the Fleet, but since their culture spit on them they saw no reason not to spit right back. The Cabals were not just military units but families, holding on to each other since no one else would have them. Bad turians, the lot of them, and a good turian would never be able to find a place with them no matter how desperately she wanted to, no matter how hard she tried.

It takes time to break down years of social conditioning and internalized prejudices, far longer than Nyreen Kandros would ever consent to stay in the Cabals. So her CO didn’t try to make her into one of his and instead tried to start her on the path to becoming her own. By the time she left the Cabals, the Hierarchy, by the time she finally ran away from home, oh, how she hated him. It would be years before she’d come to understand how he helped her by ripping her denial to shreds. The Hierarchy, the proper Hierarchy, told Nyreen her house wasn’t burning and she said yes, sir, the Hierarchy asked her if she saw any flames and she said no, ma’am. The Cabals pinned her to the charred floor until she had no choice but to taste the ash. She hated him for stripping away the illusion, for making her accept the truth, and when she finally broke she bypassed the proper channels entirely and delivered her resignation by screaming in his face.

It would be years before she understood why he just stood there and took it. It would be years before she could hope to know the pride thrumming in his subvocals as genuine. Years of making herself her own in merc bands and freelance contracts, years seeing good turians and bad turians alike crash and burn outside the safe constricting walls of the Hierarchy. She knew this in her gut for a long time but deep-seated survivor’s denial is such a hard habit to break. It would be years before it really hit her that her old Cabal CO saved her life, years for her to see his cruelty for kindness. Nyreen tried to send a message, to thank him, to say she never would have survived if not for what he did for her while she spited the very air he breathed, but the comm buoys were all clogged with the broadcast of Taetrus’s fate.

Her old CO shoved the brutal truth down her gullet and gave her the gift of anger. Too much will consume you, but that is true of anything. Anger is a powerful motivator and without a driving force he knew Nyreen would fall. A good turian through and through, she _made_ herself into a bad one. Questioning bad orders in a merc band can save your life, understanding that those in a superior position aren’t necessarily superior can do the same. A seed of doubt watered by experience made her question if this held true in the Hierarchy. And as much as the good turian tried to deny it, the bad turian she became knew otherwise. Though her heart still stung to think of never seeing her home again, she knew her exile was freedom.

There are no laws enforcing the turian tradition of colony markings, she could have continued on with the symbol of the home she left behind still etched in her plates. But Nyreen was a bad turian and bad turians went barefaced, but Nyreen was a good turian and good turians follow the unwritten rules.

Earning permanent clan markings at the end of boot camp meant the pain of the tattooing process, driving ink deep in the facial plates so that it would last a lifetime. The pain rolled into the pride, part of the rite of passage into adulthood, when Nyreen earned her markings she took the pain without a whimper. When the tattoo tech scrubbed the pigment out of her face, however, she couldn’t help but keen. It hurt so much more to draw all that deeply embedded pigment than it did to put it in. As it should, she thought as she tried and failed to silence her agonized cries. For Nyreen was a bad turian and bad turians deserved to be punished, for Nyreen was a good turian and good turians know that the most meaningful transformations are always hard.

She no longer belonged to the Hierarchy. She no longer had to say yes, sir, no, ma’am as her house burned around her.

Though she came into her own as a turian after she left, Nyreen still hated herself and the biotic abilities which cursed her, tore her from complacency. Until Aria. All wicked smiles and deadly grace, the Queen was beautiful and untouchable. One of Aria’s inner circle offered Nyreen a job not long after she found her way onto the station, and in time Nyreen felt a certain amount of pride in that. Aria only employed the best, after all.

Nyreen’s body had certain opinions about Aria, opinions voiced with hitched breath and warmth spreading under her plates. Nearly everyone of a compatible persuasion had a similar reaction to Aria, though, and Nyreen didn’t think anything would ever come of it. She didn’t think Aria would notice her much at all. Not until she made some offhand negative comment about her abilities in earshot of the Queen. For a very long twenty-four seconds Nyreen thought she was going to die. Nyreen flickered blue around the edges, a nervous slip she’d never been able to beat, as Aria _flared_ . Distantly Nyreen wondered if it was an intentional show of aggression or if Aria was enraged enough that the training and practice of centuries wasn’t enough to hold her much, much greater power in check. Then the blue fire vanished, punctuated by a disgusted snort, and Aria told Nyreen to report for biotic training tomorrow and nonexistent goddess save her from fucking featherless assholes and their fucked up ideas about what constitutes a _gift_.

Training with Aria was… interesting.  Nyreen didn’t consider herself a master by any means but she thought herself at least moderately skilled with her powers. Aria disagreed. Vehemently. The language certainly never got so colorful in biotic boot camp or during drills in the Cabals. Training with Aria was also much more strenuous. For a solid three months Nyreen didn’t see a single assignment in favor of being pushed to the point of exhaustion. Nyreen would never have the power or control Aria did, the eezo having to fight through the layers of thallium in her mother’s plates and her own egg during the crucial stage of development, but in time she became the best she could be.

Aria was an excellent teacher. She didn’t try to rewrite Nyreen’s history and make her into a primarily biotic fighter, no, she worked with the strengths of a lifetime of turian training, physical ability and conditioning, a military mind. Aria taught Nyreen how to properly supplement her existing combat style with her biotics, body and weaponry and blue mass effect fields working together seamlessly. Nyreen wasn’t quite ready at the time to admit to herself that her old Cabal CO did her a kindness with his cruelty, but she still knew it and could see Aria’s methods for what they were. If Aria saw potential enough in Nyreen to spend months of her time training, well. Aria didn’t give false praise, and she didn’t waste time on people she deemed worthless.

Nyreen remembered that the first time Aria told her how good she was, all teasing lust, the first time sparring turned a different kind of heated. Aria lied, sure, but she didn’t waste her time.

And so it was. Perfection. For a while. The glow faded, as it always does, and all that remained is what they were. And for all Nyreen’s rejection of the Hierarchy’s ways, for all her dedication to being anything but the model turian who said yes sir and no ma’am as her house burned around her, some of the things Aria did didn’t sit right with her. Or rather, what she didn’t do, the people she failed to protect. A good turian made bad turian but a good woman nonetheless, everything Aria allowed wedged under Nyreen’s plates. A month after Archangel died so did their romance, and much in the same way as the symbol. Slowly worn down by a hundred tiny attacks before taking a rocket to the face.

Before that shouting match there was another, back when Nyreen threw the datapad with her resignation on it at her CO’s desk so hard it skittered off and hit the floor. Aria roared at Nyreen to get off her station, but this time when the Queen’s biotics roared blue fire around her Nyreen didn’t so much as flicker. She’d keen, later when she was alone, mourn what she thought they might have been, but all Aria saw was Nyreen standing steadfast and strong and in control. Distantly, as Nyreen walked away, she wondered if her old CO would be proud.

Nyreen thought things were pretty bad in that raw moment of a freshly failed relationship, in the corridors teeming with thugs making life terrible for people. But however bad things seem they can always get worse. She’d never learn what her old CO would have thought of her. He died in the second wave of the Reaper attack on Taetrus.

Aria was never the good ruler Nyreen wanted her to be but good--like strength, like safety, like pain--is relative. If Patriarch still ruled Omega--unbeaten, unbroken--then when Cerberus threatened to destroy the station he would have stayed and fight. More than anything else tenacity is the krogan race’s greatest strength and greatest weakness all rolled into one. Tenacity is why they were sent in everdying waves to the pits of the rachni nests. Tenacity is what drove them to consume rather than adjust to their newer and kinder surroundings. Sheer stubborn refusal to die is what Tuchanka required of her children. If Cerberus offered that ultimatum, abdicate or die, Patriarch would always chose death.

Tuchanka taught the krogan tenacity, but Thessia taught the asari a different lesson. Aria left because it was best for her but then she came back. A clever creature like her, still so very young, had the skills and power and time to find herself another throne. But Omega was hers, and maybe, just maybe she thought of the Reaper horrors already roaming her station’s corridors terrorizing her people, and maybe she thought about all the ways Cerberus could hurt her people oh so much more creatively than the gangs could ever dream. Maybe the voice in Aria’s head nagging her about children being turned to monsters had sub-vocals. Aria wasn’t the ruler Nyreen wanted her to be, but maybe she wasn’t quite the detached tyrant she tried to be.

Good is relative. Safety is relative.

Pain. Pain is relative.

On a distant moon Archangel’s ghost stared up at Palaven, tracing the lines of fire written across his world. Thessia translates to rock, Earth to dirt, Sur’kesh to big field, but in an ancient turian dialect Palaven means _home._ A bad turian but a good man, he knew the value of morale. He knew placing blame was pointless when millions died a day. And so he never gave voice to the question that bounced around in his skull, the question that his lost soul roared in agony.

_You want to tell me again how my house isn’t on fire?_

A battleground can be any size. A cluster, a system, a planet, a city, a room, a single sentient mind. Garrus Vakarian’s battlefield began as a moon and grew to the whole of the galaxy. Nyreen’s battlefield consisted only of a space station infected with Cerberus and Adjunct horrors as well as the familiar corruption that once seemed so terrible. Palaven means home, but it hadn’t been home to her for a long time. Omega, though, Omega was home. A bad turian and a good woman, she vowed to fight to the death to protect it. And in the wake of the toughest battles, as she saw her friends taken and turned into adjuduct monstrosities, Nyreen heard the echo of the Queen bouncing around inside her plates. _You’re brave, biotic, and that’s_ **_not_ ** _a compliment. To be brave is to be stupid. Be_ **_confident_ ** _, for fuck’s sake._

She tried. Nyreen pretended, projected the image of confidence to all those who needed her to be strong, to lead, to be the shield and the sword. She rebranded herself, her face, taking the Omega clan markings not in any way recognized by the Hierarchy as legitimate. She never quite felt it in her bones, though. Always a pretender, always a step behind, never quite fitting in, always at war with what she knew and what she _knew_ . Before Omega, before the Cabals, before the first flicker of blue light peeled the shiny plate away from the universe and revealed the grisly underpinnings, Nyreen would have called Aria pirate scum. She would have called Archangel traitor. But for all Aria’s many flaws and vices, for all she doesn’t do for the people, Nyreen knows now, she _knows,_ that Omega is better for Aria’s rule. For all Archangel’s secrecy and underhanded tactics what he did worked, and in a place like Omega all that matters is what _works_. And Omega really isn’t so different from supposedly civilized space, and unlike the Citadel or Illium they’re honest about being liars and criminals and thieves. She’d take a thousand Omega gangs over one Cerberus general smiling pleasantly as he unleashed nightmares into the station.

The last time Aria thought she’d see her former employee and former lover Nyreen, the bad turian, the good woman, stood stiff and stoic and didn’t let a slip of emotion by. The last time Aria would ever see her, through the shifting blue of the barrier the great Pirate Queen taught a half-timid little merc how to shore up properly, Nyreen’s face was equal measures sad and terrified. Both times, though, Nyreen stood her ground. When Nyreen wanted to go after the gangs Aria told her not to be brave. Aria told her not to be stupid.

And maybe Aria saw herself in Shepard or maybe she saw Nyreen but either way maybe those sub-vocals followed her long after Nyreen ended so bravely. Maybe, just maybe, the Queen carried on the legacy of the Archangel and the Huntress. Maybe it takes a couple of bad turians to start the fight and a bad asari to finish it. Maybe when she returned to her throne Aria decided to carry on her lover’s legacy. Maybe Aria decided to be stupid. Maybe she decided to be brave.

To be brave is to be more than you are.


End file.
